Attack

 

It's high summer, my bee hive is under attack. The flies (which are imitating wasps) are laying eggs in crevices hoping that when the maggots hatch they can sneak into the hive.

Tasty

 

I got together with some friends. We all have native bee hives. 

I helped to extract some honey. Then demonstrated how to split a bee hive into two.

We laid out samples of our honey and compared tastes. 
Left     - Sweet with mild flavour
Middle - Well balanced flavour
Right   - Very strong flavour

The reward

 

This is native bee honey harvested from the hive of the previous post.

The hive produced a total of two jars like this, about 1 kg.

The native bee honey is less viscous than european honey bee honey. The taste is sweet with a citrus tang. Like honey bee honey the taste varies with the plants used to make it. Because the honey matures in pods made from a mixture of wax and resin it has favours and substances contributed from the resin. The antimicrobial activity of Tetragonula carbonaria honey has been measured to be higher than the famous Manuka honey.

It is delicious.

Drip, drip

 

The honey super has been flipped over to drain the honey out. The bees are still calmly wandering over the hive.

Next the honey is strained through a mesh sieve.

Can you smell the sticky sweetness?

Honey! Super!

The honey super - upside down

 Here I have placed the honey super (ie top level) from a native bee hive on a table and I am poking holes in the honey pots with a bamboo skewer. Soon I will flip the honey super over to allow the honey to pour out.

I intend to leave most of the propolis (mixture of bee wax and tree resin) so the bees can quickly rebuild.

The bees are still very calm - they are crawling around the hive and not flying in a defensive cloud.

The Hive

 

Open native bee hive (bottom section) - Tetragonula carbonaria 

These stingless bees build their brood  area in a spiral.

When weighed this native bee hive was over 9.5 kg. This meant that it was full of bees and full of honey.

The hive is made to be split in half to make two hives out of one.

The brood area was built as a spiral which is characteristic of Tetragonula carbonaria. The other stingless honey-producing species is Tetragonula hockingsi whose brood area is more higgledy piggledy. 

Around the brood area are pods made of propolis (a mixture of tree-resin and wax). In the photo some pods are broken showing either liquid honey or yellow pollen.

In this particular hive the honey pods are near the  main entrance (bottom of photo) and the pollen pods are towards the rear (top of photo) - This is the opposite of the usual arrangement. This hive was positioned so that the small rear vent was in a sunnier position for some of the year - the bees then preferred to use vent as the  as a main entrance.

I do not remove any honey from the bottom brood chamber. I only remove honey from the separate top chamber called a honey super.

Weigh in

 

This hive weighs 10.5 kg.

When a native bee hive weighs about 9 kg then it is read to be harvested.

The overall hive dimensions are 200mm x 280mm x 295mm (high). The box is has three pieces. The bottom piece and middle piece form a single chamber for the brood. The middle level (mid box) is sealed at the top to separate it from the top piece (honey super) except for a connecting hole towards the top-back.

The front of the bottom piece has a main entrance (12mm diameter). The back of the mid box has a hole of a vent (7mm diameter). 

The thoney super is a chamber much smaller than the combined chamber of the bottom and middle pieces. Bees enter it by going through the brood chamber to the top-back and passing through the connecting hole.

The position of the entrance between the mid box and the honey super means that the bees are likely to store only honey in the top level.

The painted design on the front is to help the bees find the right hive.

Leaf cutter

 Earlier in the year I noticed a bee - I think a native solitary bee - flying around the ferns like it was looking for something. So I took a tree branch out of the rubbish pile and drilled a hole in one end then put it with the ferns.

Now a leaf cutter bee has made a nest in the bore hole. I has laided eggs in the hole and made chambers with leaves.

Now I watch and wait.

Change of Guard

I divided a native bee hive into two hives on the weekend.

The stingless bees flying around my face can be distracting. So I wore a headnet. I had bought the net for outback travelling. But there was a problem - the net is impregnated with an insecticide which made the bees fly erratically and, I presume, die. I need a different net.

When I opened the hive I found that the hive of Tetragonula carbonaria bees had been replaced by Tetragonula hockingsi. The different species look identical to the naked eye. But carbonaria arrange their nests as a spiral and hockingsi nests are more higgledy piggledy. 

Another example of environmental change - hockingsi prefer higher temperatures and used to live to the North of Brisbane.

A photo from a few years ago showing a spiral Tetragonula carbonaria nest.

Mud pies

Today I made some mud then I squeezed it into the hollows of a couple of bricks.
I really enjoyed making the mud.

The project was to make a suitable nest site for the many solitary bees living around here. Some borrow into bare earth. So I placed the brick with the mud in a warm accessible spot.
Other bees make nests in crevices and hollow stems. The Northern side of the house is warm through the winter and many bees and spiders make a home between the planks.

Neon cuckoo bee on cucumber flower-

Native bees

Australian native bees are easy to care for. They need
1) A hive box
2) Sun in the morning
3) Shade in the afternoon
4) 18 deg celsius to fly
They are an easy to care for pet and they give a delicious honey.

Native Bee Hive in workshop - OATH design

You can find Hive designs at sugarbag.net website. 
A good book about native bees and keeping stingless bees is The Australian Native Bee Book by Tim Heard (ISBN 978-0-646-93997-1).